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I believe in autonomous teams, i.e. organization units that are guided by a shared culture, directed by an internalized strategy, equipped with adequate information to make the right decisions, and structured to self-organize for the task at hand. I believe in autonomous teams because they seem to deliver, empower people, and be highly productive, too.

A leader is someone who has followers. Every leader is sometimes frustrated because people don’t follow. I, at least, have spent several dark moments trying to figure out why “they”, the people that were supposed to follow me, don’t get it.

Every leader receives complaints or constructive feedback every now and then. Sometimes the feedback is concrete: ”my pay is too low”. Sometimes its vague: ”we need more openness”. Sometimes it may even be alarming: “we are being managed by fear”

Almost once a month someone in my team says something like ”you are not living in this reality” or “you don’t understand what we really do”. I agree on the first claim but not at all on the second one.

It is still common for companies to conduct annual employee satisfaction surveys. It is dangerous, though, to assume that the survey results tell what people really think. You need to dig into the results to understand what they mean and to figure out what to do about them. Here are a few traps you should avoid.